Real Estate Forums

Jared · 03-03-2008, 09:30 AM

In our industry we often say that those who pay the least scream the loudest. Designers at some point in their career will discover that you can't please everyone and that the only way sometimes to truly qualify clients of design as responsible and intelligent, price is often set high enough to ward off the curious and delusional while remaining affordable for the serious.

As it so happens, I've recently discovered some old forum posts I've managed to get moderators to delete regarding some unwarranted badmouthing regarding my design services. The author of the post quickly points out that I had been hired to convert a Template Monster template into the mega popular Joomla template format for a Joomla CMS site. The author then goes on to discuss how unhappy he was with my service listing an unusually long list of things that I had NEVER been contracted for.

Naturally I decided to dig out the emails before forwarding them to the forum moderators to validate my position and sure enough I had only been contracted for the conversion of a template which equates to about $150 worth of work.

So what goes wrong in these instances?

I had to examine that a bit myself because I was more than just curious. Now although the price is most commonly between $150 - $250 for a template conversion to either WordPress, Joomla, Drupal or pure XHTML / CSS there is for some reason this persistent belief that "TEMPLATE DESIGN" equates to "SITE DESIGN" or some facet there of. Naturally nothing could be further mis interpreted than this very belief.

As this author went on in his disparaging post, a rather lengthy list was propagated which fostered an unusual amount of responses suggesting the kinds of actions I cant restate responsibly. But what baffled me regarding this thread I had discovered was unusual amount of claims that had been made like which I'll casually summarize just the most important. Please keep in mind that I do not work for $2 an hour out of a coffee shop on a dirt floor in India so price isn't to be argued in this case. I simply wont do business with cheap and those that do are simply irresponsible greed mongers. To me the idea of sending US Dollars out of country to nations that not only hate you but have no direct interest in performing with the details needed for solid quality work, is insane and selfish.

The $150 expectation as articulated in that NOW REMOVED thread.

Never configured Joomla or the SEF Url's
Never setup the navigation. (apparently based on the design)
Never provided the photos for the random photo rotator.
Never finished any of the pages (he was referring to content as I discovered)
Never finished the contact us form (a default feature in Joomla he overlooked)
Never finished newsletter section (apparently he figured coding was free)
The list of nevers went on naturally.

Lets look at how some of these things happen.

Many times a person will discover a design they really like in some sort of template resource online and seek out guys like me to convert that design to work with WordPress or Joomla for instance. Its unfortunate that some people take the addition of content to fill those pages as literal not understanding that "content is not part of the design" Content as well as logic are the types of things that a good site structure will keep separate from the user interface or design and good quality resources make this possible such as WordPress and Joomla.

So there we have it for now; However, as a result I thought I'd build a nice long draft of design processes and procedures for those interested in what one should and should not expect from various types of design services related to web design. Mack has adopted my old slogan "The difference is in the details" for his procedure or process and I'll build upon that in a subsequent post regarding this very subject.

Please stay tuned....

~ Jared

Jim B · 03-03-2008, 10:39 AM

Sorry that you have had that experence Jared. There is just to much of that Wal-mart mentality out there. I deal with it all the time, and some people just will not understand "You Get What You Pay For" until they have been burned terribly. When dealing with selling a home that burn can be 10's and even 100's of thousands of dollars.

NealRM · 03-03-2008, 11:42 AM

Jared,
I have had simular experiences. In our case, it deals with advertising services. Our major local competior also has a site for displaying listings. And if you purchase a $1500 per week newpaper ad they will take a single photo of each listing in the ad and place it on the web for "Free". So for $6000 per month you can get your listings on the web for "Free". Unfortunaly, some see the "FREE" photos and ask why we still charge a sitting fee. I then have to explain why the listings are not really free, that the newspaper's site gets 1/5 the traffic and that they are sending out a $5/hr intern to so the photos.

However, there is a good side. This has forced me to better market my services. Determine why and how I am better than my competor and gives me a chance to discuse this in a positive manner with my clients. Also, sometime it is good to listen to the harshest of critics. It's like using a microscope to examine a problem. The smallest things gets magnafied.

IDXSEOPRO · 03-03-2008, 12:07 PM

I have seen this in my business to Jared. When writing articles people seem to believe you can hire someone in a nation that doesn't speak English or know our customs and yet receive content for $2 a copy.

I get that so often when I quote our rate only to hear that I'm too expensive because they can get someone to do it for $3 - $5 per article. Or even more humorous is the people that say they can hire a college kid to do it for less than we charge.

I don't see how any real estate professional can even remotely believe such nonsense is possible.

But if it matters every one else speaks highly of you. Are you the only designer in your company or do you?

Jared · 03-03-2008, 12:43 PM

JimB, thanks and yes, it was basically an easy thing to have removed from that forum once I sent them a copy of the email detailing the information related to hiring me for that project. Walmart mentality is a pretty good way to articulate it.

Lets take that to the extreme though, bare with me. I had this phone call with a Realtor in California that said they recently dumped a well known Canadian company and he asked me why I thought people would stay with a Company they know to be real unethical and negligent. I simply said, no one will chase away a meal ticket even if... As long as people benefit, most would turn away from even the most lofty capital crimes in exchange for money. There is an well known international fraud who wrote a book that stated "the more shiny the hook, the more they bite" and its true. Some things look good but in fact will hook you in and put you in the fry pan with a little lemon juice and salt. Then, you're cooked. Thus the lure of cheap, low quality, and potentially bogus can be easily candy coated to look like something its not.... Which is "??????" and we all know the answer.

Neal, I totally agree as I've built integrated publishing systems for Nickle publishing group using InDesign, MySQL, and PHP and people "frequently" have a little trouble understanding what is and isn't part of a product or service. So frequent in fact that they had to literally make it part of the advertising agreement requiring initials before they would accept ads with internet equivalents. That company had long since abandoned the RTF agreement generator I published for them in favor of straight printed, signed and faxed back copies. I guess there is a great deal more assumption than there should be which seems to be a trend in recent years.

What did the Standford University call this era? "The age of entitlement".

IDXSEOPRO; par for the course and dito on that note. I feel the same way about $3 SEO mentality. As said by Mack "It's quality, NOT quantity that matters"

Jared